The Ashiel mystery Part 18

"Do you mean to say he proposed that, merely as a way out of the difficulty?"

"Well, more or less. I don't say he isn't attracted by the pretty face of her, as much as his cousin was; privately I think he is, but I don't really know. Anyhow, it certainly would be a very good solution; but it was tactless of him to suggest it with David at the foot of the gallows, poor boy."

"She didn't tell me that," murmured Gimblet.

At that moment Juliet came into the room, and they talked of other things.

"I hear the post is gone," Gimblet said presently.

"I particularly wanted to catch it. I suppose there is no means of posting a letter now?"

The last train had gone south by that time, however, so there was nothing to be done till the next day.

He retired again to his room and gave himself up to his correspondence.

First a long letter to Macross in Glasgow, begging for the loan of prints of the photographs taken by the police during their visit, together with any details they might see fit to impart as to their observations and conclusions. "I have arrived so late on the scene that you have left me nothing to do," he wrote deceitfully. "But for the interest of the case I should like to have a look at the photographs."

He did not expect to get much help from Macross.

Then he took from his pocket the pill-box in which he had stored the dust so carefully collected in the gunroom. He wrapped it carefully in paper, and addressed the small parcel to an expert a.n.a.lyst in Edinburgh. He wrote one more letter, and then went downstairs again.

The dressing-bell sounded as he opened his door, and at the foot of the staircase he met the two ladies on their way to dress.

"Dinner is at eight, Mr. Gimblet," Lady Ruth told him.

"I was just coming to find you," Gimblet answered her. "I want to ask if you would mind my not coming down? I am subject to very bad headaches after a long journey; and, as I want particularly to be up early to-morrow, I think the best thing I can do is to go straight to bed and sleep it off. It is poor sort of behaviour for a detective, I am aware, but I hope you will forgive it."

"You must certainly go to bed if you feel inclined to," said Lady Ruth; "but you will have some dinner in your room, will you not? They shall bring you up the menu."

"No, really, thanks, I shall be better without anything. I know how to treat these heads of mine by now, I a.s.sure you, and I won't have anything to eat till to-morrow morning. The only thing I need is quiet and sleep. If you will be so very kind as to give orders that I shall not be disturbed...."

"Of course, of course," said his hostess, full of concern. "And you must let me give you an excellent remedy for headaches. It was given me years ago by dear old Sir Ronald Tompkins, that famous specialist, you know, who always ordered every one to roll on the floor after meals, and I invariably keep a bottle by me."

And she hurried off to fetch it.

Gimblet accepted it gratefully, and as he pa.s.sed a hand across his aching brow said he felt sure it would do him good.

Once again within his own room, however, the detective's headache seemed to have miraculously vanished, and he showed himself in no hurry to go to bed. Instead, having locked the door and drawn down the blind, he sat down in an arm-chair and gave himself up to reflection. Mentally he rehea.r.s.ed the facts of the case as far as they were known to him, and was obliged to admit that he found several of them very puzzling.

There were other problems, too, not directly connected with the murder, of which he could not at present make head or tail. For instance, where was he to find the doc.u.ments which he knew it was Lord Ashiel's wish he should take charge of. He had promised that he would do so, and the recollection of his failure to guard the first thing the dead peer had entrusted him with made him the more determined that he would carry out the remainder of his promise. But how was he to begin his search? He had so little to go on, and he dared not hint to anyone what he wished to find. Yet, if he delayed, it was possible that young Ashiel would come across the papers in his hunt for his uncle's will, and Gimblet felt there was danger in their falling into the hands of anyone but himself.

He took out his notebook and studied the dying words of his unfortunate client.

"Gimblet-the clock-eleven-steps." Or was it steppes?

Considering that he had lived in dread of a blow which should descend on him out of Russia, the last seemed the more likely.

There was the strange circ.u.mstance of the body's being found by the police in a position differing from that described by those who first saw it. Young Ashiel, Juliet and the butler all agreed that it had fallen forward on to the blotting-book in the middle of the table; but Mark had told him that on his return with the police the att.i.tude had been changed. Had he been mistaken? Macross's photographs would show. But if not, and the murdered man had really shifted his position, what did it prove? That they had been wrong in thinking him dead? The doctor's evidence was that the wound he had received must have been instantly fatal, or almost instantly. Then some one must have moved the body, and who but David knew where the key of the room had been put away? But why should David have moved him?

Then there was the letter which had come two days after the murder; the letter written in French and posted in Paris, but probably not written by a Frenchman, and so timed as to reach its destination too late. Was it intentionally delayed, or would Lord Ashiel's death come as an entire surprise to the writer? It certainly would, if the police were right, and Sir David Southern guilty of his uncle's death.

But was he guilty? Gimblet thought not.

These and other questions occupied the detective's mind so completely that half an hour pa.s.sed like a flash, and it was only when the noise of the dinner-bell broke in upon his meditations that he roused himself and pulled out his watch. Then he sat upright, and listened.

His room was above the drawing-room, and he could hear Lady Ruth's clear, rather high voice mingling with the deep tones of a man's, in a confused, murmuring duet which after a few moments died away and was followed by the distant sound of a closing door.

It was not difficult to deduce from these sounds that Lord Ashiel had arrived, and that the little party of three had gone in to dinner.

It was half an hour more before Gimblet rose, and walked quietly over to the window. He drew the blind cautiously aside and looked out. Already the days were growing shorter, and the little house, embowered in trees, and shut in by a tall hill from the western sky, was nearly completely engulfed in darkness. Below him, on the right, he could just discern the top of the porch, and beyond it a faint glow of light rose from the window of the dining-room.

It did not need a very remarkable degree of activity to clamber from the window to the porch, and so down to the ground. To Gimblet it was as easy as going downstairs. In two minutes he was stealing away under the trees in the direction of Inverashiel Castle.

"The worst of this Highland air," he said to himself as he walked along, "is that it makes one so fearfully hungry, even here on the West Coast. I could have done very nicely with my dinner. But such is life. And it's lucky I am not entirely without provisions."

So saying, he took a box of chocolates from his pocket and began to demolish the contents.

CHAPTER XIII

By the time he reached the castle, the night was dark indeed. He approached it by the path along the burn, and felt his way cautiously up the steep zigzags of the hill, and past the servants' quarters, where a dog barked and gave him an uneasy minute till he found that it was tied up, and that the noise which issued from a brilliantly lighted window-which he guessed to be the servants' hall-did not cease or diminish on account of it.

There were no other lights to be seen, and he edged his way round to the front of the house, which loomed very black and mysterious against the liquid darkness of the moonless sky. A little wind had risen, and the sound of a million leaves rustling gently on the trees of the woods around was added to the distant murmur of the burn, so that the night seemed full of noises, and every bush alive and watching.

Keeping on the gra.s.s, and with every precaution of silence, Gimblet crept along till he thought he was outside the drawing-room.

It did not take him long to find the window he had left unlatched that afternoon, but it was an anxious moment till he made sure that no one had noticed it and that it was yet unfastened. If a careful housemaid had discovered it and shut it, he would have to begin housebreaking in earnest. Luckily it opened easily at his touch, and he lost no time in climbing in, though it was rather a tight squeeze through the narrow imitation Gothic mullions, and he was thankful there were no bars as in the library.

He had more than once during his career found himself obliged to enter other people's houses in this unceremonious, not to say burglarious fashion. But it was always an exciting experience; and his heart beat a trifle faster than usual as he stood motionless by the window, straining his ears for the sound of any movement on the part of the household. Nothing stirred, however, and by the help of an occasional gleam from his pocket electric torch Gimblet made his way to the door, and through the deserted house to the distant pa.s.sage leading to the old tower. Once inside the library he breathed more freely, and when, after holding his breath for some minutes, he had made certain that the absolute silence of the place continued unbroken by any suspicion of noise, he felt safer still. His first act was to draw the curtains, and to fasten them together in the middle with a large safety-pin he had brought for the purpose. Then, secure from observation, he switched on his torch, placed it on the table with its back to the window, and set about what he had come to do.

As he had not failed to observe, earlier in the day, the book-lined walls of the library were broken, opposite the window, by a panelled alcove where a small table stood, beyond which, against the wall, was a very large and tall grandfather's clock of black and gold lacquer, in imitation of the Chinese designs so popular in the eighteenth century.

Among Lord Ashiel's last words, "The clock" had been uttered immediately after the detective's own name. No doubt they formed part of a message he wished to convey; and, though they might refer to any clock in or out of the house, it seemed to Gimblet worth while to begin his investigations with the one nearest at hand, and he turned his attention to it without loss of time.

Gimblet was a connoisseur of the antique, and a few minutes' examination proved to him that this was a genuine old clock, untouched by the restorer's hand, and in an excellent state of preservation. The works appeared all right as far as he could make out, but through the narrow half-moon of gla.s.s, so often inserted in the cases of old clocks for the purpose of displaying the pendulum, that article was not to be seen, and he found that it was missing from inside the case, as were also the weights, so that it was impossible to set it going. There was one odd thing about it, which the detective had already remarked: it was firmly fixed to the wall by large screws, and he thought that there must be some opening through the back into a receptacle contrived in the panelling behind it. The case was so large that he was able to get inside it, and examine inch by inch the wood of the interior, which was lacquered a plain black.

But his most careful tappings and testings could discover no hidden spring, nor, even by the help of the electric torch-which he pa.s.sed all over the smooth surfaces of the walls-could he discern the slightest join or crack. Could there be a hiding place up among the wheels of the motionless works? His utmost endeavours could discover none. The clock was fully eight feet high, but with the help of a stool, which he put inside on the floor of the case, he was able to explore even the topmost corners. All to no purpose.

Presently he abandoned that field of research, replaced the stool whence he had taken it, and gave his attention to the surrounding walls. He examined each panel with the most painstaking care, but could find nothing. There was no sign of secret drawer or cupboard anywhere.

It was disappointing, and he drew back, baffled for the moment

"The clock-eleven-steps."

What was the connection between those broken words?

If eleven o'clock had anything to do with the answer to the riddle, it could not refer to this particular clock, which pointed unwaveringly to thirteen minutes past four. Could it be possible that at eleven there appeared some change in its countenance? Was it controlled by some invisible mechanism? Well, if so, he would witness the transformation, but such a solution did not seem likely. Was there no other meaning applicable to the words? He would try the last ones and a.s.sume that eleven steps from somewhere, the clock, probably, would bring him to the hiding-place where the precious papers had been deposited.